The Gunk

Image & Form's first 3D title doesn't have any obscene messes to clean, but it never excels beyond a conventional distraction.

Rewild an alien world in this elegant and thoughtful game.

A striking and confident 3D platformer that's a real feast for the senses, but one that plays it very safe compared to Image & Form's more inventive SteamWorld games.

The Gunk is an absolute triumph- it looks gorgeous, crafts an addictive and engaging gameplay loop, and tells a story that succeeds on every level.

The Gunk never really falters at any point during its decidedly short runtime, but also fails to do anything to push itself above a crowded group of peers in the action-platformer genre. The pro-environmental themes are laid on real thick here, but it all works reasonably well within the confines of the story and action. As with many new games released recently, The Gunk is eligible for Xbox Game Pass on Day 1. While it may not offer a memorable experience, it is difficult to argue against giving it a try for the price, especially if you are smitten with most action platformers. 7/10 Pumpkin P...

The Gunk is an entertaining adventure with a message about pollution and industrialisation. with a likeable protagonist. The pacing is a little drawn out toward the end of the six to seven hour journey, but there's a great visual style and an enjoyable game to experience.

While not perfect, The Gunk is a fun game that carries a great and important message. We need to save our environment. A compelling story, relaxing yet sometimes boring gameplay, and stunning visuals.

The Gunk is a fun to play story based adventure platformer with puzzle elements.   The voice acting is very good with performances that really expressed the emotion of the lead characters.  It has an unusual graphical style that works well with the soothing music and chilled out difficulty of the puzzles.  An interesting world has been created here by Thunderful Games and it is well worth checking out on day one via Xbox Game Pass.

The Gunk is a difficult game to talk about. It’s not hard to describe, and it isn’t shocking or disturbing. It won’t make you rethink your life choices. It’s not even a particularly bad game. But it’s also not a particularly good game, either. It’s like one of those totally nondescript, pretty ok days when you think, I’ll never remember today even happened. What was I talking about? Oh, right. The Gunk. See, that’s the problem.

Cleaning up the titular Gunk is satisfying, but the rest of the game surrounding it is routine and overly familiar.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with The Gunk. It works from a technical standpoint and it isn’t the worst way you can spend about five hours of your time. But I just can’t muster up any sort of authentic excitement about it. If it were funnier or cleverer or more challenging, I could maybe start to see it as a title I could recommend. But as it is, the best I can do is pay it that slightly backhanded compliment of saying it’s perfect for Game Pass.

The Gunk players may also find themselves frustrated with the game's restrictive linearity. The Gunk wants players to complete its platforming challenges in a very specific way with no real room for experimentation, and this is best illustrated by its ledges. Throughout The Gunk, Rani will come across many ledges that she should clearly be able to grab on to, but arbitrarily can't. The only ledges Rani will grab are ones with yellow marks on them, and so it seems that the other ledges should've been made higher to be out of her reach because there's no real reason why she shouldn't be able to ...